The invention relates to providing conference presentation information to remote conference participants and, more particularly, for systems for providing conference presentation information through the World Wide Web.
Organizations often require large meetings which must be attended by a number of participants. Such organizations are frequently comprised of persons located at disparate locations. One way for all of the conference attendees to attend the conference would be for all of the conference attendees to travel to a single location. However, arranging for all of the conference attendees to be in a particular location at a particular time creates a number of logistical and practical difficulties. Among these difficulties are the travel costs associated with making sure that all of the conference participants are at the same place at the proper time. However, regardless of the expense a conference presenter is willing to spend, another difficulty is arranging the conference at a time convenient to a vast number of people.
One prior art solution which saves an organization the expense of travel for all conference participants is teleconferencing. Teleconferencing is relatively easy to establish, but is limited and awkward to use for large numbers of participants. In addition, teleconferencing becomes quite difficult when documents become the focus of the conference. Teleconferencing also suffers from a drawback in that the remotely located conference participants do not receive any sort of visual feedback.
Video conferencing offers yet another means by which remote conference participants may participate in a conference without being physically present. Video conferencing allows visual data such as data related to participants and documents which they may present at the conference. However, video conferencing generally requires special setups and usually requires a specialized facility for receiving the video conference. Video conferencing facilities may not be available in all remote locations. In addition, all of the remote conference participants at a location having a video conferencing facility must be present in the same physical space in order to receive the video conference.
Neither standard teleconferencing nor video conferencing easily accommodates delayed review of the presentation material for remote conference participants who are unable to attend the original presentation due to time conflicts. Within a company there is a need to easily coordinate meetings where all participants have access to the same information at the same time. Time, distance and/or lack of special facilities should not preclude effective meetings.
The invention provides a method and system for presenting a conference data set to a remote computing system of a remotely located conference participant in real-time. The conference presenter receives configuration data for the remote computing system of the remotely located conference participant and uses the received configuration data to select a conference data set format suitable for transmission to the remote computing system. The conference data set comprises at least one of the conference presentation documents, conference audio data, and conference video data. The conference presenter encodes the conference data set in the selected conference data set format and transmits the conference data set over a network to the remote computing system. The conference presenter may transmit the formatted conference data set from a web page available on the World Wide Web. Conference data sets in other formats may each be transmitted from other web pages. The remote conference participant accesses the conference data set through standard web browsing software.